Seven villagers have been killed in Virunga National Park in volatile eastern DR Congo after going to fetch charcoal, local sources said Friday.
Situated on the Democratic Republic of Congo’s borders with Rwanda and Uganda, the park covers 7,800 square kilometres (3,000 square miles) of North Kivu province, of which Goma is the capital.
The men came from the village of Karambi in Rutshuru territory, about 30 kilometres (18 miles) north of Goma.
“We learnt that they had been tied up and killed,” a resident told AFP by telephone from Goma.
“They were killed on Wednesday with machettes, their bodies were picked up today (Friday),” a local official said.
He said they were aged between 20 and 30 and, with no other source of livelihood, would go into the park to make charcoal to sell in Goma.
Those responsible for the killings have not been formally identified.
Residents blame rebels from the M23 group, which has seized swathes of the province including in Rutshuru territory over the last two years, with help from neighbouring Rwanda.
They say that the M23 bans residents in areas under its control from going into the park on the grounds that militiamen — for whom they could be mistaken — have their rear bases there.
The Congolese army has called in local armed groups they had previously fought in the area to help drive out the rebels, rebranding the combatants as “wazalendo”, or patriots.
The region has been wracked by violence in the decades since regional wars in the 1990s.
Founded in 1925, the Virunga National Park has been recognised by UNESCO as a world heritage site since 1979.
It is a sanctuary for rare mountain gorillas, for its fauna and landscapes, but has also served as a base for a number of armed groups for more than two decades.
